UV Experiment - Blocking UV Rays NEW EXPERIMENT! Don’t throw away your old prescription bottles. email to friend
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Don’t throw away your old prescription bottles. Solar science educator, Jim Stryder, recently shared a unique method of demonstrating the "power" of ultraviolet radiation (uv-rays) for K-12 students using our UV Energy Beads and a plastic prescription bottle.

Materials

You'll need one of those brownish prescription bottles and some of our color-changing UV Beads. They come in assorted quantities:

UV Bead Standard Pack (250 beads)
UV Bead Large Pack (1000 beads)
UV Bead Super-Size Pack (2500 beads)

Experiment

Solar science educator, Jim Stryder, recently shared a new activity using our color changing UV Beads and a plastic prescription bottle. Upon refilling a prescription at his local pharmacy, Jim noticed a marking on his brown prescription bottle that read – “UV BLOCKING PLASTIC”. Being the solar science enthusiast he is, Jim immediately filled an empty prescription bottle with Energy Beads. To his amazement, the bottle blocked out nearly 100% of the UV light! Come to find out that many drugs are sensitive to damaging UV light, so the bottle is specially designed to preserve the life of your prescription.

Jim Stryder suggests testing a variety of plastic bottles and transparent containers to see which ones block out the UV rays the best. Hmmm… this sounds like the making of a great new science fair project!

"I use all the various types and colors of medicine bottles I can find to test the different screening properties of the various bottles," says Jim Stryder. "Sometimes I use assorted bead colors, other times I use only one color of bead. The beads come in various colors like; red, yellow, blue, purple, orange. You can test this yourself by comparing the various types of common products, like different plastic/glass bottles, even water bottles, because their "thickness" levels do vary with design, and will show different levels of uv-exposures."

Virtually nine out of ten students have never seen ultraviolet radiation (uv-rays) demonstrated this way! It's also a sure bet to put both a smile on your students' faces and curiosity on their minds!

How does it work?

UV Beads have a chemical substance embedded into the plastic that will change color when exposed to UV radiation (sun light). The beads will remain white indoors as long as they are kept away from windows or doors where UV light can “leak” into the room. Many prescription bottles have a chemical embedded into the brownish plastic that blocks out almost 100% of the UV that might cause damage to the medicine. Using the UV Beads is a great way to test this out!